Instead of Chris Pitt finding one defeated rider from every Grand National since 1946, here Nige Tassell attempts to find one member of every band (22 of them) to have contributed to the NME's era- and (for good or ill) genre-defining cassette compilation of 38 years ago.
Nige succeeds, and indeed exceeds his brief in some cases (all five original members of Mighty Mighty). Not that, admittedly, the likes of David Gedge (The Wedding Present) or Vickie Perks and Maggie Dunne (Fuzzbox) are notably hard to find nor generally anything other than wholly generous with their time for interviewers.
However, many discoveries required serendipity, patience or inexhaustible supplies of careful persistence and trust building. Stephen Pastel, for one, rewarded Nige's powers of gentle persuasion in spades. Malcolm Eden (McCarthy) and Cath Carroll (Miaow), sadly, could not.
Having found his interviewees, Nige had the good sense to let them talk... and talk... For all he'd done his research beforehand, few if any preconceptions and precious little in the way of an ego influence the line of questioning.
These are stories to be told, in full, whilst an often fleeting - and in some cases never to be repeated - opportunity has arisen.
The humanity of the interviewee is frequently as evident as that of the interviewer. A number of those approached were dealt a succession of bad hands post-C86 (many at the hands of feckless record labels) which wrecked highly promising careers - David Westlake of The Servants perhaps suffered more than any. No bitterness.
Others still found themselves fired from their respective C86 band when assuming to be set fair - q.v. the aforementioned Wedding Present's Peter Solowka. Again, no bitterness.
Instead, a sense largely pervades of a deep gratitude to have been involved in something they love(d), captured on a compilation whose influence and legacy couldn't possibly have been anticipated at the time.
Anno domini and all that dictates that nobody associated with the book is even remotely close to young adulthood anymore. Many careers have been forged among the C86 alumni, from academic (several of these) to driving instructor (Sushil Dade of the Soup Dragons), from bicycle repair shop proprietor (David Keegan of The Shop Assistants) to Jeremy Irons' body double (Julian Hutton of The Shrubs).
All adult human life is covered, even if some of it not in particularly generous distributions. The listing of all performers in the glossary serves, presumably unwittingly despite one contributor making the point explicitly themselves, to reiterate the predominance of white males in '80s independent music.
In interviewing Sushil, Nige speaks to just one of two people of colour among the 94 musicians all told. In talking to Vickie and Maggie, plus the then Pastels drummer Bernice Simpson (now a major player in Big Pharma and a pioneer in fairtrade contraceptives), he's caught up with 30% of the compilation's female performers (all condensed into five bands, none appearing earlier than track 11). The days of, say, Indietracks' line-up gender parity feel a long way off.
The passing of such a long period of time also, inevitably, increased the likelihood of that total of 94 personnel having been depleted in number in the meantime. Even so, the revelation that three-quarters of Hebden Bridge's finest musical outsiders Bogshed were lost to cancer before reaching their sixties (including Nige's interviewee, the caricaturist Mike Bryson, prior to publication) was genuinely saddening, the most poignant moment in a book not otherwise devoid of them.
An involving and affecting read, therefore, and one which can't help but lead those of us who have grown up with the compilation (it was certainly among my earliest purchases from the recently departed Rae Donaldson at the Vinyl Exchange) to listen to it again with fresh insight. Not that prior knowledge of C86 would necessarily be a prerequisite to enjoying its accessible, easily digestible 400 pages.
It will also make you love some people - John Peel, the ruinously generous Dave Parsons of Ron Johnson Records - even more than you ever did previously; make you eyeroll at BBC session producer (and former Mott the Hoople drummer) Dale Griffin's sniffiness towards musicians bigger on heart and creativity than stultifying proficiency; and make you realise Denise Johnson and Martin Duffy were far from the first collaborators whose treatment by Bobby Gillespie left something to be desired...
